surveillance – Page 2

Cyber attack on Merkel’s aide

The German chancellor’s office has fallen victim to a hacking attack, according to a German newspaper. The Regin malware in question has been linked to British and US spy agencies.

The complex spying malware arrived via a USB stick to the work computer of the unit head in the Department for European Policy, where it was picked up by virus scanning software, according to Monday’s edition of the German newspaper Bild.

According to the report, the staff member, who works in close contact with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, had written a draft of a speech on her work computer, which she then took home using a USB stick at the end of the day and worked on it using her private laptop.

She later saved the document again on her private USB stick and brought it back into the office, to use on her work laptop. A virus alert went off and it was detected that the USB stick was infected with the spying software Regin. Checks of all other high-security laptops in the Federal Chancellery revealed no additional infections.

The cybersecurity company Symantec first warned of the highly-sophisticated malware at the end of November. According to them, the Regin spying software can make screenshots, control the mouse cursor, steal passwords, monitor data traffic and restore deleted data.

According to US news website “The Intercept,” which was co-created by Edward Snowden confidant Glenn Greenwald, Regin was deployed to steal information from governments, companies and research institutions. According to them, the British spy agency GCHQ and the United States spy agency NSA were involved in the development of the sophisticated spying software, which is particularly difficult to detect.

Source: AFP, dpa

UN to investigate GCHQ, MI5 spying at climate talks

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has announced he will launch an inquiry into allegations that British secret service agents spied on foreign governments at two consecutive international climate summits in 2009 and 2010.

Speaking to Danish television, Ban Ki-moon said the allegations were a UN issue, because the climate summits are UN conferences.

“All diplomatic information is inviolable. If there has been any breach … they should be investigated. UN information should be protected in its entire confidentiality,” he said.

The presentation, disclosed by former NSA senior analyst and whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealed it became a “serious intelligence priority” for Britain’s clandestine intelligence services to spy on negotiations brokered an international UN summits from 2007.

The 23-page PowerPoint presentation was first published by Swedish site Dagbladet Information.

The file entitled, “Supporting HMG’s (Her Majesty’s Government) Climate Change Ambitions,” states a GCHQ secret service official frequented the high profile UN gatherings, also attended by an array of international leaders.

The document indicates the spy reported to Downing Street, the foreign secretary, diplomats, the Department for International Development (DfID), the business department, the Treasury and MI5.

According to the file, the GCHQ official was planted in the UK delegation because such a cover would facilitate direct access to other state’s delegates along with useful documentation they were in possession of.

The spy’s remit, as outlined in the document, was to discern states’ climate policy leanings, report on how far they were prepared to broker on issues, uncover if foreign delegates poised at the UN negotiation table were receiving orders from their respective governments, and relay this information back to British officials to bolster Britain’s leverage at the climate talks.

While the talks failed spectacularly in 2009, the UK secret service operation was reportedly a success. States were expected to wrap up years of tenuous negotiations with a landmark cross-border agreement to curb carbon emissions.

Such actions could amount to a violation of international law, because UN climate conferences are officially declared to be UN territory throughout the negotiations.

Snowden’s disclosure could cause embarrassment to current leftist Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, who held the position of energy and climate change secretary in 2009. Miliband also led the British delegation at the UN Climate Summit in 2009.

Snowden fingers Dropbox, Facebook, Google as hostile to privacy

Edward Snowden has hit out at Dropbox and other services he says are “hostile to privacy,” urging web users to abandon unencrypted communication and adjust privacy settings to prevent governments from spying on them in increasingly intrusive ways.

“We are no longer citizens, we no longer have leaders. We’re subjects, and we have rulers,” Snowden told The New Yorker magazine in a comprehensive hour-long interview.

There isn’t enough investment into security research, into understanding how metadata could better be protected and why that is more necessary today than yesterday, he said.

The whistleblower believes one fallacy in how authorities view individual rights has to do with making the individual forsake those rights by default. Snowden’s point is that the moment you are compelled to reveal that you have nothing to hide is when the right to privacy stops being a right – because you are effectively waiving that right.

“When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights – you don’t have to justify why you need freedom of speech.”

In that situation, it becomes OK to live in a world where one is no longer interested in privacy as such – a world where Facebook, Google and Dropbox have become ubiquitous, and where there are virtually no safeguards against the wrongful use of the information one puts there.
In particular, Snowden advised web users to “get rid” of Dropbox. Such services only insist on encrypting user data during transfer and when being stored on the servers. Other services he recommends instead, such as SpiderOak, encrypt information while it’s on your computer as well.

“We’re talking about dropping programs that are hostile to privacy,” Snowden said.

The same goes for social networks such as Facebook and Google, too. Snowden says they are “dangerous” and proposes that people use other services that allow for encrypted messages to be sent, such as RedPhone or SilentCircle.

The argument that encryption harms security efforts to capture terrorists is flawed, even from a purely legalistic point of view, Snowden said, explaining that you can still retain encryption and have the relevant authorities requesting private information from phone carriers and internet providers on a need-to-know basis.

And the penchant for close, secretive cooperation with the government will only cost companies money and jobs, Snowden added, because no one would want to buy a phone made by a company that provides inherent backdoors for third parties to access your information.

“The same rights that we inherited our children deserve to inherit the same way,” Snowden said.

“But ultimately we have to remember that political reform in the United States is not going to solve the problem globally. Governments [everywhere] are going to have their own national laws. And these can be terrible governments… so, because of that, you have to use secure communications… the real key is that companies willing to collaborate with the government and compromise their products and services do not deserve to be trusted with your data. Because if they do it for one government, they’ll do it for another government,” Snowden said.

For consumers to retain trust in the services they use, they need to fight for the very idea of privacy, to keep the topic in focus, he said, adding: “I speak with computer scientists and cryptographers every day to try to figure out how we can create solutions” for metadata to be appreciated and viewed as someone’s own private business.

“There are solutions, there are ways forward, and we need to pursue them, to work toward them,” Snowden said. “And we need to say that this is an effort worth doing.”

The whistleblower continues to lead a secretive existence in Russia, where he’s been stranded since June 2013, hiding from his own government, which is seeking to prosecute him for his crimes behind closed doors.

“I’ve told the government again and again in negotiations, you know, that if they’re prepared to offer an open trial, a fair trial in the same way that Dan Ellsberg got, and I’m allowed to make my case to the jury, I would love to do so,” Snowden said. “But to this point they’ve declined.”

Source: RT

FiveEyes agencies break German laws

Treasure Map is anything but harmless entertainment. Rather, it is the mandate for a massive raid on the digital world. It aims to map the Internet, and not just the large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. It also seeks to identify the devices across which our data flows, so-called routers.

Furthermore, every single end device that is connected to the Internet somewhere in the world — every smartphone, tablet and computer — is to be made visible. Such a map doesn’t just reveal one treasure. There are millions of them.

The breathtaking mission is described in a Treasure Map presentation from the documents of the former intelligence service employee Edward Snowden which SPIEGEL has seen. It instructs analysts to “map the entire Internet — Any device, anywhere, all the time.”

Treasure Map allows for the creation of an “interactive map of the global Internet” in “near real-time,” the document notes. Employees of the so-called “FiveEyes” intelligence agencies from Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which cooperate closely with the American agency NSA, can install and use the program on their own computers. One can imagine it as a kind of Google Earth for global data traffic, a bird’s eye view of the planet’s digital arteries.

In addition to monitoring one’s own networks as well as those belonging to “adversaries,” Treasure Map can also help with “Computer Attack/Exploit Planning.” As such, the program offers a kind of battlefield map for cyber warfare.

Treasure Map graphics don’t just provide detailed views of German cable and satellite networks. Red markings also reveal to agents which carriers and internal company networks FiveEyes agencies claim to have already accessed. Of particular interest from the German perspective are two “Autonomous Systems” (AS) — networks — marked in red. They are labeled Deutsche Telekom AG and Netcologne, a Cologne-based provider.

Because Netcologne is a regional provider, it would seem highly likely that the NSA or one of its Treasure Map partners accessed the network from within Germany. That would be a clear violation of German law and potentially another NSA-related case for German public prosecutors.

Swiss could grant Snowden asylum

Switzerland has reportedly decided it will not extradite National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to the US if he comes to testify against the NSA’s spying activities, Swiss media said.

It has been revealed that trade secrets from other nations are not safe with the NSA. Snowden suggested earlier that the United States conducted espionage to prevent losing its economic prowess to other countries.

In the document, titled “What rules are to be followed if Edward Snowden is brought to Switzerland and then the United States makes an extradition request,” Switzerland’s Attorney General stated that Snowden should be guaranteed safety if he arrives to the country to testify, Sonntags Zeitung reported.

In particular, the report proposes to ensure the whistleblower’s safety by inviting him as a witness to a parliamentary hearing focusing on the NSA’s surveillance practices.

In the document, the authority said that Switzerland does not extradite a US citizen, if the individual’s “actions constitute a political offense, or if the request has been politically motivated,” Swiss ATS news agency reported.

Snowden’s safety can thus be guaranteed if it is ruled that the charges against him have a “predominantly political character,” the document concluded.

The only obstacle for that could be “higher-level government commitments,” the Office of the Attorney General said, adding that it must be verified if such obligations do, in fact, exist.

The document was reportedly requested last November.

Snowden’s Swiss lawyer, Marcel Bosonnet, said he is pleased with the Attorney General’s conclusions.

“The legal requirements for safety are met,” he assured, adding that Snowden has already showed interest in testifying.

Immigration rights activist Sarah Progin-Theuerkauf hinted that Snowden might even have a shot at Swiss asylum following the proposed testimony.

“There is evidence that Edward Snowden meets the criteria of refugee status under the Geneva Convention and therefore should be granted asylum,” she told Sonntags Zeitung.

Swiss politicians meanwhile are calling to welcome Snowden to Switzerland as soon as possible.

“We must now move forward, so that Snowden can travel to Switzerland as a witness as soon as possible,” SVP National Luzi Stamm said, adding that the Swiss people have the right to know the truth behind the extent of US spying activities.

Over the past year, Snowden has been the recipient of the German ‘Whistleblower Prize,’ the Sam Adams Award which was presented to him in Moscow, the German ‘positive’ Big Brother Award, the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, and the Fritz Bauer Prize.

He also joined the board of directors of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, co-founded by Daniel Ellsberg, and was elected in absentia as rector of the University of Glasgow.

Source: RT

Merkel orders surveillance of US and UK

Chancellor Angela Merkel has ordered her counter-espionage services to begin surveillance of British and American intelligence gathering in Germany for the first time since 1945 in response to a series of US spy scandals which have badly soured relations between Berlin and Washington.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung and two-state funded German TV channels, WDR and NDR, quoted an unnamed Berlin government source who said Ms Merkel’s Chancellery and her interior and foreign ministries had agreed to launch counter-espionage measures against Britain and the US for the first time.

“Right now we need to send a strong signal,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted the source as saying. The extraordinary measures are a direct response to a series of embarrassing US and British spying scandals in Germany which began last year with revelations that the US National Security Agency had bugged Ms Merkel’s mobile phone.

The Chancellor protested on several occasions that she was “not amused” by the disclosures

The Independent subsequently revealed that like the Americans, Britain was operating a secret GCHQ listening post from the top of its Berlin embassy. A similar listening post on the roof of the US embassy in Berlin was almost certainly used to eavesdrop on Ms Merkel’s phone.

Source: The Independent

Typewriters, classical music to end US spying

Politicians in Germany have devised an ingenious solution to combat the threat of eavesdropping by American spies: playing classical music during their meetings.

MPs who sit on the spying committee had become so concerned that US agents might listen in to their discussions that they had ordered classical music to be played, to drown out the discussions.

On arrival at the meeting, The Suddetusche Zeitung reported that for “security reasons” MPs had to put their mobile phones and computers into a large metal box to ensure that they were not subjected to outside surveillance. “Then the committee chairman, Patrick Sensburg switched the music on,” a source told the paper.

Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported at the weekend that German intelligence suspected that a further 10 CIA agents were working undercover in various Berlin government ministries.

Patririck Sensburg, head of a parliamentary inquiry investigating US National Security Agency spying in Germany, said MPs were seriously thinking about ending the use of computers.

Seeding the net with false info

The British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, “amplif[y]” sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be “extremist.” The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call.

The tools were created by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG’s use of “fake victim blog posts,” “false flag operations,” “honey traps” and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users.

But as the U.K. Parliament today debates a fast-tracked bill to provide the government with greater surveillance powers, one which Prime Minister David Cameron has justified as an “emergency” to “help keep us safe,” a newly released top-secret GCHQ document called “JTRIG Tools and Techniques” provides a comprehensive, birds-eye view of just how underhanded and invasive this unit’s operations are. The document—available in full here—is designed to notify other GCHQ units of JTRIG’s “weaponised capability” when it comes to the dark internet arts, and serves as a sort of hacker’s buffet for wreaking online havoc.

Source: First Look

Diplomatic earthquake as Germany halts US cooperation

US has nothing to contribute other than clichés about transatlantic ties

The German government’s decision to recommend the CIA station chief’s removal was reportedly made at a senior governmental level, following a “fruitless” telephone exchange between CIA Director John Brennan and Klaus-Dieter Fritsche, the coordinator between the German Chancellery and the BND.

According to German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Brennan offered Fritsche no apology and had “nothing to contribute other than clichés about transatlantic ties”, as well as his expressed irritation about the way the media were handling the incident.

Berlin is also irritated by the fact that US President Barack Obama did not raise the issue during a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on July 3, even though the CIA’s BND recruit had been arrested the day before.

German government sources believe the President either had not been notified by the CIA of the agent’s arrest, or was too embarrassed to mention it.

Meanwhile, Washington has so far remained silent on the matter. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told reporters on Thursday: “we’re certainly not going to discuss who knew what and when in regards to the allegations”.

Germany has instructed its intelligence agencies to limit their cooperation with their American counterparts “to the bare essentials” until further notice, according to media reports.

The move follows news that Berlin requested on Thursday the immediate removal from Germany of the United States Central Intelligence Agency chief of station —essentially the top American official in the country.

The request came after two German citizens, one working for the BND, Germany’s main external intelligence organization, and one working for the country’s Federal Ministry of Defense, were allegedly found to have been secretly spying for the US.

German media reported on Thursday that the temporary halt in Berlin’s intelligence collaboration with Washington applies across the spectrum, with the exception of areas directly affecting tactical security concerns for Germany, such as the protection of its troops in Afghanistan, or defending against immediate terrorist threats.

Sources in the German capital claimed that the removal of the CIA station chief was technically a “recommendation for his departure”, and did not constitute an official diplomatic expulsion.

However, German observers described the incident as a “diplomatic earthquake”, which would have been unthinkable as a policy option for the German government, barring actions against “pariah states like North Korea or Iran”.

This is not the first time an American intelligence officer has been asked to leave Germany. Berlin expelled another CIA officer in the 1990s, after it emerged that the American intelligence Agency had tried to recruit a German official at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs.

Unlike the current imbroglio, the previous spy affair was handled discreetly and with almost no media fanfare, as is customary among allies.

Germany expels CIA chief in Berlin

Germany is expelling the CIA chief in Berlin in retaliation for the latest espionage scandal.

The expulsion comes shortly after two alleged US agents were unmasked, suspected of acting as double agents within the state security apparatus, and passing secrets to US intelligence contacts.

The move was “a reaction to persistent failure to work together in efforts towards clarification,” according to the chief of the Parliamentary Control Panel.

The two new cases, which came in quick succession of one another, increase the strain on already tense relations after the revelations made about the extent of global NSA espionage in June, 2013.

Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized the spy’s presence in Germany, stating that when common sense is switched on, “spying is ultimately a waste of force,” reported Der Spiegle.

She added that in 21st century intelligence work, there should be a strong focus on the essentials rather than that which is just technically possible – to the point that “one can’t see the wood because of all the trees,” Merkel said.

“The order arose against the backdrop of the ongoing investigation by the General Prosecutor’s Office, in addition to existing issues in recent months surrounding the actions of US intelligence agencies in Germany,” said the document.

The US stated on Thursday that it was imperative that the two nations continued to cooperate on intelligence and security matters.

“We have seen these reports and have no comment on a purported intelligence matter. However, our security and intelligence relationship with Germany is a very important one and it keeps Germans and Americans safe,” White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told Reuters.

“It is essential that cooperation continue in all areas and we will continue to be in touch with the German government in appropriate channels,” she added.

A 31-year-old intelligence officer was arrested last week, and further reports on Wednesday indicated that a German soldier was also being investigated.

According to German newspaper Die Welt, the soldier was said to have made “intensive contacts” with alleged US intelligence officials, and had been under surveillance by Military Intelligence (MAD) for some time.

The US has not yet denied allegations that the German intelligence official was passing classified information to the NSA.

In a report published on Monday, two unidentified government officials told Reuters of the CIA’s involvement in the operation, which led to the recruitment of the 31-year-old suspected spy, who is now in the custody of German officials.

The man was alleged to have passed the Americans 218 secret documents in exchange for € 25,000 ($34,100), and having been a double agent for them for two years through meetings with his contact in Austria and passing on secret documents on a USB stick.

Last October, Merkel was enraged to learn she was allegedly on the NSA’s tapping list since 2002. The Chancellor called the alleged spying, which became known thanks to Edward Snowden’s leaks, “unacceptable.”

A German parliamentary committee has since been holding hearings on the NSA’s spying activities in Germany.

Source: RT

Second US spy busted in Germany

German authorities are investigating a second spy case reportedly involving the US, only a week after the arrest of a German intelligence employee cast a new shadow over relations between the two countries.

Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that police raided properties in the Berlin area on “initial suspicion of activity for an intelligence agency.” They did not elaborate or specify what intelligence agency was involved, but said they had not made an arrest.

The daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported, without naming sources, that the man being investigated worked in “the military field” and is suspected of spying for the United States.

SZ adds that the case is more serious than unrelated allegations against double agent at BND Federal Intelligence Service that emerged last week.

A 31-year-old German intelligence employee was arrested last week on suspicion of spying for foreign powers since 2012. German media have reported he spied for the United States and offered his services to Russia.

The U.S. ambassador to Berlin was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Friday after news of that case broke. He was asked to help clarify the case.

Ambassador John B. Emerson was at the ministry again on Wednesday for a meeting with a senior official, said a German official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Source: AP

India summons top US diplomat about spying

India summoned the top diplomat from the US for the third time about spying.

A new document supplied by Edward Snowden and made public by The Washington Post on Monday showed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was among authorised targets for the NSA in 2010 while it was India’s main opposition.

India has complained to the United States on two other occasions, in July and November 2013, over other revelations — including the disclosure that its UN mission in New York and its Washington embassy were snooped on.

“What we have said is that we expect a response and an assurance that this won’t happen again,” a foreign ministry source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Both times Washington has said it would look into what it can share about its espionage programme but failed to offer any details, the source said.

“We have said that we would like a response, which we haven’t received,” he said.

The new incident comes ahead of a visit to New Delhi by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is expected to meet members of Modi’s government in the next few months.

Modi, whose party swept to power in May with the first majority in 30 years, will travel to the United States in September for the UN General Assembly and his first meeting with President Barack Obama.

German aid for deadly US drone attacks

The BND offers ‘language assistance’ in African languages.

The filtering system the German spy agency, the BND reportedly uses does not reliably prevent German targets with .com and .org domain names from being monitored by the US.

In response to questioning about the close cooperation in Bad Aibling, the BND said that the Joint SIGINT Activity and the Joint Analytical Center were discontinued “in 2012 and 2011, respectively.” In addition, the BND noted in a statement, no joint surveillance took place prior to the facility’s discontinuation: “Even before, signals intelligence was performed exclusively by the BND.”

The NSA documents, though, tell a different tale.

A map from the spy program Boundless Informant, published by SPIEGEL in the summer of 2013, indicates that the NSA collects vast amounts of data in Germany.

One document, which explains the program, says that data is collected “against” a target country.

In the Wharpdrive program, BND specialists are even taking the lead. According to one document from the Edward Snowden archive, Germany’s cooperation with the NSA’s Special Source Operations is meant to provide “unconventional special access” to fiber-optic cables.

As far back as 2006, the BND was working in Schöningen on algorithms that could detect patterns or anomalies and thus enable it to exploit social networks for intelligence purposes.

BND surveillance could very well contribute to guiding the deadly drones to their targets. Indeed, the former head of NSA and CIA Michael Hayden recently confirmed, “We kill people based on metadata.”

Other documents state that the BND offers “language assistance” in African languages. It is also clear that the BND shares the results of its monitoring of two foreign ministries as well as Internet telephony originating from a crisis-plagued country in the Middle East.

These days, tensions between the upper echelons of government in Germany and the United States are at their highest in years, but these documents suggest a smooth relationship between the eager BND and the covetous NSA.

There was only one point on which the United States expressed reserve: A request by the Germans to use information from NSA surveillance in “open court.” The document, from April 2013, said there were concerns that the disclosure of surveillance capabilities in a German court could have ramifications and that the “desired and planned level of cooperation” could not be maintained.

In this instance, Germany’s adherence to its own constitution seems bothersome to the Americans.

Source: Der Spiegel

Second US drone intercepted over Crimea

An American scout-attack drone was intercepted in the Crimean sky, the Rostec state corporation reports. “Judging by side marking, the MQ-5B drone was part of the 66th US brigade of military intelligence with the main location in Bavaria,” the report on the website of the corporation reads.

According to the report, at the beginning of March, the American brigade was relocated to the Ukrainian Kirovohrad, from where drones commit reconnaissance raids in the direction of Crimea and Russian border areas.

Earlier, they reportedly appeared in the Kherson region, in the area of the Crimean roadblock Chongar.

The 66th Military Intelligence Brigade is a United States Army brigade, subordinate to United States Army Intelligence and Security Command and based at Wiesbaden Army Airfield, Wiesbaden, Germany. After years of history as a counter intelligence/intelligence group with headquarters in Munich and geographically dispersed detachments, it became a brigade on 16 October 1986, but was inactivated in July 1995. Reformed again as an intelligence group in 2002, it became a brigade again in 2008.

The unit’s mission is to provide intelligence support to U.S. Army Europe and U.S. Army Africa.

Part of the 66th Military Intelligence Brigade supports near real-time missions for deployed soldiers such as operations in Afghanistan and also Iraq.

“According to some data, the American reconnaissance brigade had 18 MQ-5B drones in its arsenal. This is the second time the American UAV is intercepted over Crimea,” the report says.

“The drone was at the height of about 4 thousand meters and was practically invisible from the earth. It was possible to break the drone’s link with its American operators with the help of the EW (electronic warfare) complex Avtobaza. As a result, the device made an emergency landing and passed into the possession of the self-defense forces almost unbroken,” the report says.

Ten years ago a German drone nearly collided with a passenger plane over Afghanistan. The classified drone camera footage drew public attention after the German defense ministry scrapped a drone program for its lack of anti-collision technology.

Footage taken by an EMT Luna X-2000 reconnaissance drone as it passed mere meters under the left wing of an Airbus A300 passenger plane surfaced on YouTube several years ago. After the encounter, the drone was caught in the plane’s wake turbulence, lost control, and crashed over the Afghan capital Kabul, Der Spiegel reported.

The Ariana Afghan Airlines plane was carrying about 100 people on board, the magazine said. The manufacturer of the 40kg drone has claimed that the near-collision occurred after the passenger jet veered off-course without informing ground control.

The video was leaked a week after German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière decided to scrap the $652 million EuroHawk program meant to be a replacement for existing reconnaissance aircraft. EuroHawk is part of the NATO Global Hawk project.

Local German communities have expressed apprehension about US drones being in German airspace. Germans are concerned about potential violation of their freedoms after the drones come into operation. The recent scandal surrounding NSA spying activities in Germany and the protests that followed, has heightened public skepticism.

“It’s a big issue here in general, and it’s a very German topic,” Constanze Schulze, a reporter for ARD Bavaria stated. “There are many discussions going on about unmanned units, and of course there is some concern. I think that’s why you see so many reporters here. Everyone is talking about it.”

Politicians have also expressed concerns. Reinhold Strobl of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP) said that the public was informed “too late” and that there was “inadequate” information provided by the German authorities and US military ahead of the deployment. If it was not for test flights conducted in July, the politician says, Germans would have been left completely in the dark.

Richard Reisinger from the Christian Social Union Party (CSU) also said that the way the public was informed about the issue lacked transparency. “What happens to the collected data?” he asks, expressing concern of potential risk of information misuse.

Source: Voice of Russia/BBC/RT